The year is 2017. There has been a massively successful
movement of pro-capitalist, anti-socialist, free-market
libertarians to privatize government programs and replace their
functions with voluntary associations, businesses, charities, and
other organizations all competing against each other for the
dollars of consumers who value their products and services.

The movement was funded almost single-handedly by Mukesh
Malayalam, the inventor of the Geo-MagŪ energy system, which
harnesses the earth's natural magnetic fields to produce
electricity, and drove the price of oil to below $4.50 a barrel.
Malayalam, the famous Pakistani child prodigy, moved his world
headquarters to Surprise,
Arizona, in Maricopa County, and within 5 years doubled the
population of Arizona, providing jobs and "free
energy" to millions. Malayalam's philanthropic
foundation, which quickly surpassed the assets of the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, invested billions of dollars in
television ads, movies, school curricula, and celebrities in music
to push Malayalam's pro-capitalist agenda of "more
responsibility, less government, and with God's help, a better
world." Hundreds of millions of energy consumers around
the world, grateful for plummeting energy costs, eagerly scooped
up the pro-capitalist vision, with Mel Gibson's pro-capitalist
movies shattering box-office and broadband records, and dozens of
new music artists leading aging singers in bringing libertarianism
to the top of the pop charts.

First to go was government welfare. Free energy was providing
jobs for all -- even in the collapsing oil industry -- and
dropping prices while raising real wage rates. Churches and
voluntary associations quickly moved in to cover the needs of the
few who had been left behind. "Voluntary giving has always
been greater than tax-funded government handouts," said
Franklin Graham, son of the late evangelist and head of the "Samaritan's
Purse" charitable clearinghouse. "We've always been
confident that if government got out of the way, churches and
other private charities could meet the needs of the poor more
efficiently and more personally, adding a spiritual
dimension."

Education was also rapidly privatized, and test scores
skyrocketed as juvenile crime plummeted. Malayalam's Geo-MagŪ
industries set the trend by establishing schools for children of
employees, and these students -- if they didn't stay on with
Malayalam's growing Geo-MagŪ empire-- were being snatched up by
neighboring Maricopa County hi-tech industries while similar
students on the East Coast still languished in crime-ridden public
high schools. Soon the apprenticeship model swept the West and
spread East, and traditional government schooling was quickly
recognized as the dinosaur it had long become.

One government agency after another on both the local and state
level was abolished as private-sector counterparts began adopting
Malayalam's many technological innovations and left government
agencies in the dust. After Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and
California effectively eliminated all state borders between
themselves with the adoption of the SunBelt Economic Pact (SEP),
the aging Ted Kennedy, in a move that outraged his followers and
led in 2010 to the end of his long political career, proposed a
similar unification of the Northeast. Kennedy's call was seen as
an abandonment of the nearly-anachronistic pro-government
principles of the Democrat Party, which were already experiencing
death-throes in the West. Polls indicated that more than 80% of
Americans (but only about half in the Northeast) supported
Capitalism and favored abolition of nearly all government
programs.

In a movement led by Speaker of the House Ron
Paul (R) of Houston, the Federal Government had been reduced
in size by nearly 75% since the Presidential Election of 2008. Now
just one year away in 2018, "The Abolition Amendment"
was expected to be approved by the legislature of the last state
necessary to make it the final amendment of the U.S. Constitution,
as the Ohio and Pennsylvania legislatures raced against each other
to be the state that put it over the top, securing the 2/3
necessary to ratify the proposed 29th Amendment to the
Constitution.

Also dubbed "The Last American Revolution," "The
Abolition Amendment" has two short sections:

(A) The Constitution of the United States is hereby declared
null and void, the federal government abolished, and all powers of
the federal government are hereby returned to the People or to the
several States, from which they were delegated.

(B) Section (A) of this Amendment shall take effect upon the
vote of the entire People of the United States on the first
Tuesday of November, 2018.

While momentum to abolish all traces of socialism was rapidly
making the Amendment superfluous, Americans are starkly divided
over the proposed Amendment. Many people, even among those who
support capitalism and abolition of uncompetitive government
programs, feel a sense of sentimentalism and patriotism which
won't allow the idea of abolishing the United States to take root,
even though one-fourth of the states have effectively been
abolished, and Washington D.C. has nearly been emptied of its
power, especially since the Defense Department was virtually
abolished by Malayalam's perfection of "scalar
wave" weapons in 2009. (Malayalam's victory over Defense
Department attempts to confiscate scalar wave technology was the
subject of Mel Gibson's blockbuster movie in 2011.)

But perhaps the most curious source of opposition to the
Abolition Amendment is the North-LaHaye coalition.

Tim LaHaye was the co-author of the "Left Behind"
fiction series, a best-selling series of books and movies at the
turn of the century which made him a millionaire before his
[ironic event]. LaHaye had just reached his 90th birthday. Gary
North was the author of a book, Unholy
Spirits,which was as obscure in its lifetime as LaHaye's was popular.
North was the heir of the "Christian Reconstruction"
movement that secured the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980,
according to Newsweek magazine, which dubbed the Chalcedon
Foundation the "think tank" of the Religious Right.
North's 1994 book, itself a revision of a 1976 book, None
Dare Call it Witchcraft, was revised again in 2007 after
Malayalam's rise to celebrity status. North, expanding the claims
of his earlier book, claimed the prodigy's powers were demonic.
LaHaye labeled Malayalam "an obvious candidate" for the
"antichrist." Both LaHaye and North, who for decades
jousted with each other over competing views of prophecy and the
future, together rallied conservative Christians to join the
"Romans 13 Foundation" in Pensacola Fl, which surprised
many observers and even many conservatives with its strident
opposition to the Abolition Amendment.

Romans 13:1-7

Let every soul be subject unto
the higher powers. For there is no power but of
God: the powers that be are ordained of God.

Whosoever therefore resisteth the
power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they
that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.

For rulers are not a terror to
good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be
afraid of the power? do that which is good, and
thou shalt have praise of the same:

For he is the minister of God to
thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil,
be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain:
for he is the minister of God, a revenger to
execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

Wherefore ye must needs be
subject, not only for wrath, but also for
conscience sake.

For for this cause pay ye tribute
also: for they are God's ministers, attending
continually upon this very thing.

Render therefore to all their
dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to
whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom
honour.

Romans 13 is a Biblical text with a long pedigree in Western
Political thought, a heritage which was largely forgotten until
resurrected by the North-LaHaye coalition. "The Powers that
Be," taken as the title of a pro-capitalist DVD that went
quintuple-platinum in just the first two months of 2010, is taken
from the language of the 13th chapter of the Apostle Paul's letter
to the Romans. "They are ordained of God," said North of
the Powers, quoting a subsequent phrase in the Apostle's letter.
"The Abolition Amendment is pure anarchy, and will bring down
the judgment of God upon America," North warned.

The Abolition Amendment is widely seen as a referendum on the
entire concept of "the government." Pro-capitalist
forces have stressed the "non-aggression
axiom," the idea that it is always immoral to initiate
force against another. Citing the failure of socialist economies
around the world, many pro-capitalist leaders have forthrightly
called for "the
end of government as we know it," an ironic twist on a
slogan from the now-discredited Clinton Administration of the
1990's, and the short reign of Bill Clinton as Secretary-General
of the United Nations before its scandal-ridden downfall in 2012.
Capitalists say recent trends illustrate capitalist
theory by showing that socialism and government bureaucracies
simply cannot compete with the private sector in providing goods
and necessary public services, such as welfare, education, and dispute
resolution.

The date is now November 1, 2018. The election, which, despite
the claims of the last four Presidential elections, can
legitimately lay claim to being "the most important election
in our generation," is days away. Polls have been ubiquitous.
Some have suggested that the Internet has made it possible to poll
literally every American, instead of merely thousands, and it can
be safely said that 50% of Americans minus one vote are prepared
to vote for the Amendment, while 50% minus one vote are
committed to voting against it. You will be the deciding
vote. Your vote will determine whether we abolish "the
government" in America.